"Write it!" he screamed. "Write it that she is your daughter, and agree to take her and do right by her. Write it! I wouldn't take your word. I want a paper. You've got to take her." Barrett went pale, but his thick lips pinched themselves in desperate resolve. With the aspiration of his life close to realization he knew all that such a document could do to him. He stood up and tossed the paper away. "I'm willing to do right by the girl in the best way I can," he said, firmly; "but as to cutting my throat for her, I won't do it. You've got my word. That's all I'll do for you." "It's all?" asked Lane, with bitter menace. "All, after what you've done to me?" "I won't do it," he repeated, stiffly. The next instant, and so quickly that a cat could not have dodged, Lane struck forward with one of the irons. Barrett saw the flash and felt the impact; his brain clanged once like a great bell, and he crumbled together rather than fell. He was standing when he revived. But his hands were lashed by strips of his torn corduroy coat--drawn behind him around the trunk of a birch and tied securely. Other strips of the cloth bound legs and body close to the tree. Lane mouthed and leaped in front of him--a maniac. "Enjoy it!" he screamed. "There's a thousand-acre fire out in that level. Here's its chimney-flue. It's going through here on its way to Enchanted. It's going fast when it comes along, and it will be your first taste of what's laid up for you in eternity. Burn! And when you're burning just remember that your daughter set it--set it because you left her to grow up a hyena instead of a woman." He whirled and started away at Barrett's first wild appeal. "I wouldn't take your word! You wouldn't write it! You didn't intend to keep it!" CHAPTER XIV THE MESSAGE OF "PROPHET ELI" "And the good, kind skipper and all his crew Got a purse and some medals, tew, And a lot o' praise for a-savin' me From an awful death in the ragin' sea. And I got jawed 'cause I left that way, And the boss he docked me tew weeks' pay." --Hired Man's Sea-song. Lane's quick ear was the first to catch a new sound. He stopped and looked down into the Pogey trail. Barrett ceased his wails, and looked and listened, too. Men of the woods who knew Prophet Eli of Tumbledick were never surprised to see him appear anywhere in the Umcolcus region. And it was usually a time of trouble that he chose for his appearance. In his twenty years' search of the forest he had found trails and avenues that were hidden to others. In places where veteran guides wandered and blundered, Prophet Eli knew a short-cut or detour, and moved with wraithlike swiftness, enjoying his reputation for surprises with the keen relish of the shatter-pate. Those who did not call him "Prophet Eli," his own choice of title, dubbed him "Old Trouble," for he scented disaster with an elfish sense, and followed it north, east, and west.